This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy,
according to the prophecies which went before
on thee, that thou by them mightiest war a
good warfare; holding faith, and a good
conscience; which some having put away
concerning faith have made shipwreck: of
whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander; whom I
have delivered unto Satan, that they may
learn not to blaspheme (1 Timothy 1:18-20).

We are to hold faith and a good conscience.
If we put away our faith, we will put away our
conscience. The Apostle Paul tells us that
“whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Romans 14:23).

You may say, “I don’t need that faith stuff.”
Yes, you do. When somebody announces that
he is going to preach on the faith of God,
don’t say, “I’ve heard all that before.” Go hear
it again.

Just because you ate breakfast in 1984 doesn’t
mean that you don’t need to have breakfast
today. You have to eat every morning.

You probably eat the same thing over and over,
day after day, year after year. If you are an
oatmeal eater, imagine how much oatmeal you
have eaten. If you like eggs for breakfast, we
would have to line up chickens from wall to wall
to get all the eggs you have eaten over the
last 20 or 30 years. Yet you don’t say, “I don’t
want to eat eggs; I’ve already eaten them
once.” You eat the same things again and
again. Why?

Because the end of proper eating is a healthy
body. The end of proper spiritual nourishment
is a healthy conscience or spirit man. The end
of an honorable life is abundant and eternal life.
It comes from living in faith.

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Look at the old covenant sometime to find out how
dishonorable people fared. A man who dishonored
his family was put to death. That got their attention!
That kind of thing will make people fairly honorable
whether they want to be or not.

In the new covenant, our honor comes from God,
who not only watches over us but dwells within us.
Our honor comes from within. If we will act in honor,
then the power of honor within us will support and
sustain us, regardless of whether or not we seem
vulnerable to others. Being vulnerable has no bearing
on it. If we only are honorable when we are not
vulnerable, we are into situation ethics or situation
honor.

Being honorable only as long as it is to our
advantage is not honor at all. A person who regularly
practices situation honor will usually decide at
some point that practicing any honor any time is too
expensive. He will soon lose his honor.

When we lose our honor, even if it’s in just a few
situations, we lose the preciousness of life. It is really
even worse than that. The things we do are eternal.
We live with them forever. We need to look at
everything we do that way.

Do you realize that if we adhere to God’s Word
and treat our brethren with honor, preferring one
another, we will rarely have to make a decision? It
has been made for us. There is no question about
the “right” thing to do.

I don’t have to decide whether I want to speak to
you again. You don’t have to wonder how you should
relate to me. We don’t have to stop and think how
we are supposed to treat one another. It is already
decided. We are already committed to it. The
decisions are already made for us.

Living by God’s Word, His code of honor, is the
simplest way to live on the face of the earth. Why do
we fight it so?

Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Let me make it clear though, I didn’t get
a new set of circumstances overnight. When
I walked out of the garage at the end of that
week, my debts were just as big and my
problems just as real as when I began. But
something inside me had begun to change.
Hope had been born in me.

When I say “hope,” I don’t mean the
weak “I wish” kind of hope the world gives.
I mean the Bible kind of confident expectancy
that comes when you get an inner image of
something that hasn’t happened yet. That
kind of hope, Romans 5:5 says, never disappoints
you.

Most people aren’t familiar with godly
hope. They are, however, quite experienced
in “worry,” which is a negative form of it.
Worry begins with a thought in someone’s
mind. As it progresses, that thought becomes
a mental picture.

Once the picture is formed, every time
the person thinks of that thing, he can see it
happening. As he concentrates on that picture,
mulling it over again and again, it gets
stronger and clearer.

What he’s actually doing is meditating on
something that hasn’t come to pass yet.
Eventually, he’ll begin to talk like it has
already happened because of the inner image
he has built inside his consciousness. If he
talks it long enough, that image will show
up as a reality in his world.

Hope works that same way. The difference
is, hope’s pictures are not based on
natural circumstances and devil-inspired
fears, but on the Word of God.

If you’re going to follow the faith of
Abraham, you need to practice developing
that kind of hope.

“But, Brother Copeland, I told you before,
my situation is hopeless!”

It’s probably not any more hopeless than
mine was—and it certainly is not any more
hopeless than Abraham’s was. When God
told him he was going to have a son, he was
already 100 years old. Obviously there was
no natural hope for that to happen. To make
matters worse, his wife, Sarah, was in her
90s and had been barren all her life.

Yet the Bible says Abraham hoped against
hope (Romans 4:18). He built a picture in his
mind because of God’s promise to him, a picture
that was contrary to the pictures of childlessness
that his circumstances had given him.

Abraham drew hope from what God had
said to him and hung onto it. He drew it
into his spirit and imagined having a son. He
built it into his consciousness until he drove
out every other idea.

It doesn’t matter how far down you are
today—financially, physically or any other
way—you can do the same thing. You can
begin to build dreams out of God’s Word. A
good foundation for them is Deuteronomy 28.
It’s God’s Word and I can tell you from experience,
it is good dream-building material.

God intended for man to be a dreamer.
He built into us the capacity to do it. But
He didn’t intend for us to be limited by
natural thoughts and circumstances. He
meant for us to dream beyond them.
That’s what Abraham did. He locked into
God’s dream—and it was bigger than anything
he could have thought up on his own.

It will be that way for you, too. God’s
dream is bigger than your dream for yourself.
It is, as I said before, exceeding, abundantly
beyond all you can ask or think! (See
Ephesians 3:20.)

Father, I believe that my faith becomes
effectual divinely energized by the acknowledging
of every good thing which is in me, in Christ Jesus.
Through my union with Christ, I am a new creature.
Old things are passed away and all things
have become new.

I was crucified with Christ, nevertheless
I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.
I was buried with Him in baptism, and raised
together with Him by the power of the Holy
Spirit so that I might habitually live and behave
in newness of life. My old, unrenewed self was
nailed to the Cross with Him in order
that my body, which is the instrument of sin,
might be made ineffective and inactive for evil
and that I might no longer be the slave of sin.

Just as death no longer has power over
Jesus Christ, neither does sin have dominion
over me, through my union with Him.
I consider myself dead to sin and my relation
to it broken. I am alive only to God, living in
unbroken fellowship with Him, in Christ Jesus.

I have been delivered from the control
and dominion of darkness and
transferred into the kingdom of light.
I have been raised together with Christ and
am seated together with Him,
far above principalities, powers, rulers
of the darkness of this world and
wicked spirits in high places.
Sin shall no longer exert dominion
over me, but I have dominion over sin.
It is under my feet, in the Name of Jesus, Amen.

Scripture References: Philemon 6; 2 Corinthians 5:17;
Galatians 2:20; Romans 6:4, 6, 10-11, 14; Colossians 1:13, The
Amplified Bible; Ephesians 1:21, 2:6; 6:12.

The love of God in your heart and the
praise of God on your lips are an unbeatable
team. When an unlovely person tries to
provoke you into strife, you will remember, I
am not provoked. Instead of retaliating, let the
praise of God come out of your mouth.

This doesn’t mean that you have to let
them take advantage of you. Praise brings
the presence of God on the scene and causes
some astounding things to happen in the
spirit realm.

Notice Psalm 8:2. “Out of the mouth
of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained
strength because of thine enemies, that thou
mightest still the enemy and the avenger.”
When Jesus quoted this verse in Matthew
21:16, He said, “Out of the mouth of babes
and sucklings thou hast perfected praise.”
Jesus equated praise with strength. Strength
against what? Strength against Satan, our
only real enemy.

Now look at Psalm 9:2-4. “I will be glad
and rejoice in thee: I will sing praise to thy
name, O thou most High. When mine enemies
are turned back, they shall fall and perish
at thy presence. For thou hast maintained
my right and my cause; thou satest in the
throne judging right.”

Praise stills the enemy. It stops strife because
it stops the source of it—Satan. Praise
and love pack a powerful, “one-two punch.”
Praise will cause the devil to fall back and perish
at the very presence of God coming into a
situation. And love never fails. That’s why the
love of God in your heart and the praise of
God on your lips are an unbeatable team. You
have not only taken a defensive action against
strife, but an offensive action as well!

An excellent example of how praise backs
Satan down comes from Aimee Semple
McPherson’s ministry. She was holding a
large tent meeting when some of the townspeople
decided to throw kerosene on the tents
and “burn that bunch of religious fanatics out
of town.” They were making so much noise
outside the tent that no one could hear the
preaching. Aimee McPherson took control of
the situation by praising God.

The Lord opened Aimee’s eyes to see
into the realm of the spirit. She noticed that
every time she said, “Praise God,” the evil
spirits that were driving those men cowered
and backed away. The men eventually calmed
down and became convicted of their wrongdoing.
Before the meeting was over, more
than half of them gave their lives to the Lord.
Not only was the meeting saved, but the men
were too!

When you praise God in the midst of
strife instead of retaliating, God will not only
maintain your right and your cause, He will
maintain the right and cause of the other
person as well. Because He is no respecter of
persons, God will show you a way to have a
no-lose situation. Everyone will win because
Satan will lose!

Beginning today, you can conquer strife.
Make a decision to keep yourself full of the
love of God. Meditate the “love chapter”
(1 Corinthians 13:4-8). Confess it in the first
person several times a day. And when others
provoke you, don’t retaliate. Instead, give
thanks to God for His goodness and watch
His presence come on the scene and put strife
under your feet where it belongs!